black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

There are only three things that can kill a farmer: lightning, rolling over in a tractor, and old age.

Bill Bryson

Suddenly you are five years old again. You can’t read anything, you have only the most rudimentary sense of how things work, you can’t even reliably cross a street without endangering your life. Your whole existence becomes a series of interesting guesses.
BILL BRYSON

Cross Rudimentary Street Suddenly Things Work
… it occurred to me that never again would he be seven years, one month and six days old, so we had better catch these moments while we can.
BILL BRYSON

Months Six Years
We may be all there is. It’s an unnerving thought that we may be the living universe’s supreme achievement and its worst nightmare simultaneously.
BILL BRYSON

Achievement Nightmare Simultaneously Worst
I always wanted to do a baseball book; I love baseball. The problem is that a very large part of my following is in non-baseball playing countries.
BILL BRYSON

Baseball Book Country Problem
The first book I did – the first successful book – was a kind of a travel book, and publishers in Britain encouraged me to do more.
BILL BRYSON

Book First Successful
Still, I never really mind bad service in a restaurant. It makes me feel better about not leaving a tip.
BILL BRYSON

Better Feel Leaving Mind
Although a few antibiotics have been toughened up a bit, the pharmaceutical industry hasn’t given us an entirely new antibiotic since the 1970s.
BILL BRYSON

Antibiotic Industry Pharmaceutical
The upshot of all this is that we live in a universe whose age we can’t quite compute, surrounded by stars whose distances we don’t altogether know, filled with matter we can’t identify, operating in conformance with physical laws whose properties we don’t truly understand.
BILL BRYSON

Distance Law Stars
I wanted to see what was out there. All over America today people would be dragging themselves to work, stuck in traffic jams, wreathed in exhaust smoke. I was going for a walk in the woods. I was more than ready for this.
BILL BRYSON

Going Themselves Wanted Wood Work Wreathed
And a really good story because he was this kid who grew up essentially as an orphan, you know, had a tough life, and then he became the most successful baseball player ever. But he was also a really good guy.
BILL BRYSON

Essentially Good Orphan Player Story Successful
There’d never been a more advantageous time to be a criminal in America than during the 13 years of Prohibition.
BILL BRYSON

America Government Years
In terms of adaptability, humans are pretty amazingly useless.
BILL BRYSON

Adaptability Term Useless
It’s an unnerving thought that we may be the living universe’s supreme achievement and its worst nightmare simultaneously.
BILL BRYSON

Achievement May T Nightmare Wors
In France, a chemist named Pilatre de Rozier tested the flammability of hydrogen by gulping a mouthful and blowing across an open flame, proving at a stroke that hydrogen is indeed explosively combustible and that eyebrows are not necessarily a permanent feature of one’s face.
BILL BRYSON

Eyebrows Flames Science
When you tell an Iowan a joke, you can see a kind of race going on between his brain and his expression.
BILL BRYSON

Funny Humor Race
The average Southerner has the speech patterns of someone slipping in and out of consciousness. I can change my shoes and socks faster than most people in Mississippi can speak a sentence.
BILL BRYSON

Average People Shoes

There are only three things that can kill a farmer: lightning, rolling over in a tractor, and old age.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

There are only three things that can kill a farmer: lightning, rolling over in a tractor, and old age.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Bill Bryson Quotes